To be honest, I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't just give away Windows for free as a loss leader. It sounds like they're headed toward selling software via the Microsoft store a la Apple's app store and Google Play, in which case they'll be getting a cut of all software sales. I can understand selling some kind of "business connectivity" package that contains the domain connectivity bits that companies require at a premium. They're even getting into the hardware retail business, as well as hammering hard on search (thus data mining and advertising), online services, console gaming, etc.

With their main operating system competitors a company that sells its OS as part of its hardware package (Apple) and a loose conglomerate developers that give away their operating system--and most of their productivity software--completely free (as in speech and beer), it just seems like it would be a smart move by Microsoft to completely embrace its alternative revenue streams and make a play to get legal copies of its core OS--and its connectivity to its software store where the real money is now--on every desktop, laptop, and tablet in the world. How many users, presented with the option of buying the MacOS upgrades for $20 or $25 a pop, would be mighty tempted to install Windows 8 on their Macs for free instead, especially if they know they won't have to pay for any more MacOS or Windows upgrades down the line? Microsoft could very well steal a chunk of market share from Apple on their own hardware.

The most frequent justification I see from Linux users (myself included) for using Linux is, "You never have to pay for upgrades to get the latest and greatest version again." Yeah, the free software is nice, but you can get free software (many times the exact same software--Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, Audacity, etc.) for Windows. Yeah, the principles behind open source are admirable--and make no mistake, I would continue to support them--but most average schmoes really couldn't care less that they can download and compile their own OS source code, and wouldn't have a clue how to go about it even if they did care.

From a purely business standpoint, I really think that giving Windows away for free is the best long-term strategy for Microsoft, and it would be perceived as a bold and welcome move by the industry as well as draw in a bunch more users who would then earn Microsoft money via software sales, advertising, and online services.

Nobody credible is trying to prevent anyone from worshiping the god of their choice. Plenty of people would love to prevent everyone from worshiping the god of your choice, depending on exactly which god that is.

You know that sinking feeling you get when you realize that your keys are in the car as you're closing the car door, but it's too late to stop the momentum of your arm to catch it? It's the same as that feeling I get when I click Submit and as the little spinner is spinning and the text is uploading, I realize, "Noooo!!! That's not what I meant!"

Please remember that when people talk about a "war" on religion, this is the kind of stuff they're referring to. Nobody credible is trying to prevent anyone from worshiping the god of your choice. However, there is a sizable contingent of religious people out there who think that religious "freedom" means the freedom for everyone to be Christian, and anything that interferes with that goal is (or should) violate the First Amendment.

I never cease to be frustrated at people who wave the Constitution around and cry about how our freedom is being oppressed when it suits their ideological viewpoint, but then they pull stuff like this without seeing how much worse a violation of our liberty it is.

Jefferson is still right. Separation of church and state, it's the only reasonable way to ensure our freedom. That includes keeping creationism in churches where it belongs and out of our schools.

I'd gladly give up any channels that don't want to be part of Google Fiber for the gigabit connectivity. In fact, today I watch almost all television via Hulu, which doesn't include those channels, even CBS, so I simply don't want CBS television shows. Their loss.

I'm really tired of these network playing games with providers. They already make a killing off of advertising, and now they want to make a killing off of subscription fees, while simultaneously pushing hard for exclusive broadcast contracts and whatnot to shut people out of alternative ways of getting programming. I say screw 'em. If they don't want me to watch their channels, I will happily oblige.

And I know this is going to sound a bit idealist, but Disney has become one of the most evil companies out there when it comes to content providers. Please don't indoctrinate your kids into becoming dependent on that company for entertainment, especially when there is so much other quality entertainment out there.

Meanwhile, hey Google, I can't move to Kansas City right now. Please expand the Google fiber offering into more markets!

She certainly does seem unhinged. I can't imagine that this won't end up being some sort of mistrial and tried again.

Her behavior through this whole trial has disgusted me. This stuff is really damn important. Why are the companies being so limited in the amount of time they can have witnesses on the stand? In such a case with such a long history and of such importance, shouldn't the jury be allowed to hear all evidence that is relevant that the two sides want to produce? I mean, I can understand not want to drag it out over six months, and if the lawyers started putting completely irrelevant witnesses on the stand just to try to filibuster the trial, I can understand her wanting to crack down on them. But this is ridiculous.

At this point, if I were a lawyer for either side, it would be awful hard to care which way this trial goes because it just seems obvious to me that whatever the jury decides is going to be pretty unimportant once this trial is overturned and the next one begins.

It really is starting to strongly sound to me like Judge Koh is more concerned with her own ego and power trip than in being an impartial judge conducting a fair trial.

You must have missed the "for free" part. Skype charges for calls to POTS lines, and Google Voice doesn't allow you to make outgoing calls directly from the tablet, though it will allow you to call a phone where you are and then dial from that phone out to your contacts.

You can argue that this might not be earth-shattering news, but it's not like what the article is about is something that is as intuitively obvious as you're trying to make it out to be.

No, I was responding to the claim that just because Samsung made some phones that looked iPhone-ish after the iPhone was introduced, they must have ripped off the iPhone.

However, I most certainly am saying that just because Samsung makes phones that look like iPhones, it doesn't mean that those phones are "copies" of the iPhone, and it most certainly doesn't mean that Samsung owes them anything. Like I said, companies go where the market pushes, and right now, the market is pushing to flat touchscreen devices. There shouldn't be, and I believe there isn't, anything illegal about that. If this case is won by Apple, I believe that it will be severely detrimental to innovation, and if you think the patent trolls are bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

...thus proving my point yet again. After the iPhone, Samsung continued making a lot of different types of devices, just like they always have. Have iPhone-like devices been popular? Sure, I won't deny that. Do a lot of their devices look vague iPhone-ish? Sure, because that's where consumers are driving the market. Most cars look pretty much the same today, too--and much different from what cars looked like in the 1970s. But that doesn't mean that Samsung started making all of their phones to be "iPhone rip-offs."

Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Exhibit D
Exhibit E
...and so on.

Of course, Apple won't include those in their pictures.

I disagree. What you're not seeing is the complete list of devices that Samsung released before and after the announcement of the iPhone. There were devices before the iPhone that looked iPhone-ish, but Apple isn't going to show you those. And there have been a lot of devices after the iPhone that don't look anything like an iPhone, but Apple isn't going to show you those either. The only thing that is certain is that Samsung has released a lot of different devices over the years, and some of them have looked iPhone-ish. Because Apple makes only one style of device, they naturally assume that Samsung must have ripped them off when, in fact, it's just not true.

Or put another way, imagine if I started a car company and decided that I wanted all of my cars to look exactly like a 2005 Nissan Altima because I'd decided that was the height of style and function. Then later, I sued Nissan for ripping off my design. In court, I put forth "evidence", slides showing various models of Nissans--the Sentra, the 200SX, maybe even some old Altimas that used a different design, then slides showing the 2006 Nissan Altima, 2007 Nissan Altima, 2008 Nissan Altima, etc. To a layperson, it would look very much like Nissan ripped off my design, when in fact at best, we came up with the designs independently (and at worst, Nissan could compellingly argue that I ripped off their design).

Unfortunately, Samsung won't be able to show the jury some of the evidence of this happening, as a result of Judge Koh's ruling earlier. I still hope they are able to win this case, because otherwise, whether you like or hate Apple, you can bet that there are going to be a lot more cases coming forward dealing with design patents. Every company out there is going to see "rip-offs" of their products and sue, no matter how incidental it is to the actual workings of the product.

It's also unfortunate, because if Apple wins, it's going to also severely limit companies' ability to innovate in the future. Until very, very recently, it wasn't unusual for companies to regularly take the best ideas from other companies and people, mix them up in new ways, improve on features that were weak, and release new products to advance the industry. Apple has benefited from this themselves: they didn't invent the GUI; they got the idea from another company, improved it, and drove GUI operating system technology forward while also making it popular. They didn't invent MP3 players; they took the best of what was out there, splashed their own design and software ideas on it, and completely revived their company.

But now, god forbid someone else uses some of their ideas--ideas that they got from other places--to try to push the technology forward even further. And if I were an Apple fan, that level of protectionism would greatly concern me. To me, it says clearly that Apple is afraid that Samsung can (and quite possibly is) out-Appling Apple when it comes to design and functionality.

I mean, let's be brutally honest. How many people are going to go in a store wanting an iPhone, get confused, and come out with a Galaxy instead? Nobody. I can almost guarantee you that no one has ever gotten home and thought, "Hey waaaait a minute... This isn't an iPhone!" I will admit that there are some slick features that the iPhone and Galaxy phones share that I really like, but when I got my Galaxy Nexus, it wasn't because it was an iPhone rip-off. If I wanted an iPhone, I would have bought an iPhone, I had one prior to the Galaxy Nexus. I deliberately bought an Android phone because of features such as widgets on my phone's home screens, the ability to use third-party software that isn't in the Google Play store, the bigger screen and an aspect ratio that I like better, etc.

Of course, there are rumors now that the next generation of iPhone will have a taller screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Does Apple consider that a rip-off of the current Samsung phones that use that aspect ratio? Now that the precedent will be set, are they okay for Samsung rushing to court and sue them for stealing their ideas and trying to get injunctions to stop Apple from selling any more iPhones? Probably not. Likewise, I think the whole "but these phones vaguely look and work kind of like our phones!" argument is specious, and I hope that the jury sees it for what it is.

It's good to be the king^H^H^H^HU.S. Government!

Removing the tethering charge does not apply to people on unlimited data plans. It's either/or. Either you get on one of their bandwidth-cap plans and have free tethering, or you continue to pay the fee for tethering. I'm not passing judgment on whether that's fair or not, just pointing it out.

Creepy or not, it's not new. In the presidential election of 2004, I remember seeing a web site mentioned in an article where you could go and look up who gave how much to which campaigns for any address. I remember wondering how many people know that the information was so readily available. If anything, this will be a good thing in educating people how easy the information is to access.

It took me a minute, but yeah, I literally laughed out loud. A little awkward since I'm at work, but it was worth it.

That doesn't matter. The fact is that if someone approached me and paid a wad of cash for doing something, unless there were some really weird circumstances at work, I'd probably do my best to please them--or at least, to not piss them off--even if they paid me up front and there were "no strings attached." Plus, if you're the company performing this study, you'd have to consider the possibility that the Wikimedia Foundation might want more studies done in the future, if the results you come up with are beneficial to them.

I've seen this in politics and in corporate studies as well. If at first you don't get a result you agree with, kill the messenger and find someone else to do another study that gives you more favorable results. Bury the first ones and hype the one you like.

While I'm sure there are some organizations and/or corporations who genuinely want completely impartial results, and there are likewise some companies that generate only completely impartial results, I honestly think that it's the exception, not the rule. Any study should be considered extremely suspect that is directly funded by a company or organization it could benefit.

I could, but I have been down this road too many times with the "guns shouldn't be restricted at all" nuts. I won't do any good, it's like arguing with a Creationist. You've already made up your mind based purely on dogma and it doesn't matter what evidence there is. I've been in arguments like this before, where I waste hours of my time digging through the research to produce to someone like you, just for it to be handwaved away with, "That doesn't count because [insert bogus made-up excuse here]." It wasn't conducted by the right people, or there's some lame reason it doesn't apply here, or that doesn't count because it was done during such-and-such a time period, or for whatever bullshit reason you can make up, I know the outcome: no study that contradicts your opinion would apply. You've already done it in the post above, I have no reason to think you won't do it again.

Been there, done that, don't feel like wasting my time yet again. I don't have anything to prove to you, I've seen the studies. Look them up your own damn self if you actually care (though I'm pretty sure you don't).